C-SCHOOL is the Diotima Society (*) answer to the emerging need of a Dynamic Knowledge Gate. The C-School is an educational path, new and timeless, bridging the heritage of the classic Scholè with the oncoming Era of Shifting Paradigms, its complexity and unexpected consequences.
It is a permanent open-lab, consistent with a new idea of wealth, where processes are generating connections and new meaning, more than producing needs & goods.

This process, finalized to the harmonic construction of the many futures compressed into a multifaceted present, is called C-School, a game-changing educational experience, symbolized by an iconic “C” (“C” as Complex, Connection, Creation, Codex, Climax, Cyclos, Chaos, and Cosmos – beyond Change), and even the missing letter in between the B of Business School and the D of Design School: the merging into one another of the economic management of already known resources, and the strategic flow from still unknown or ignored, but existing and inexhaustible, sources.
In order to accompany and support universities, schools, corporate academies, and their commitment for processing into their programs a Dynamic Knowledge Gate, the C-School of Diotima Society can work as the hub connecting the most advanced experiments and disruptive proposals for a compression of the future into a present Vision and Understanding: a leap from higher-education to hyper-education, from interdisciplinary to transdisciplinary languages, from design of the visible to design of the invisible.

The C-School is fitting and empowering the most innovative educational paths and centers, for an open cooperation with all those talented universities and faculty members worldwide that feel the urgency of a challenging co-creation.

The C-School is presented in a sparkling conversation at the core of the 2014 Linz C-Festival promoted by the Ars Electronica Center: a joint provocation of the C, “what it takes to Change”, to catalyze a bridge of time and space, between Art and Technology, Beauty and Creativity, Responsibility and Innovation, Welfare and Wellness: “Surely this is the European event best suited to deal with a drifting Complexity, hiding the metamorphic shapes of the future”, says Mr. Paolo Zanenga, President of Diotima Society and co-founder of the C-School “Diotima Society’s vision sights the theme of theDubai EXPO 2020 as well, ‘Connecting Minds to Think the Future’: C as Change, and also C as Connection, convinced as we are that change nowadays emerges from connected thinking; and the C-School is a typical example of this connection”.

(*) After drawing the map of its connections, forming a multilayer topology, Diotima Society is now pointing its Knowledge Eyes on the Value Systems launched in 2013. Here change, challenge and co-creation gravitate around pillar values of life, society, and economy: Wellness, Food, Habitat.
Here, C-nodes of connection/attraction are accelerating processes that re-combine the Knowledge of selected agents from research, science, industries, art, finance, technology, NGO and Institutions, hosted in the Outpost Tower of Diotima Society: a bio-virtual, highly entropic environment, enabling the view and the interpretation of controversial scenarios, of their unpredictable interactions.

The double circularity ensures the continuous shift of the strategic perspective.

C-SCHOOL: A MODEL AND A STRUCTURE
FOR AN ORGANIC COLLABORATION WITH ACADEMIA

C-SCHOOL: A MODEL AND A STRUCTURE
FOR AN ORGANIC COLLABORATION WITH ACADEMIA

The following model represents a possible way to of collaboration with existing academies.
We outline some preliminary points:
1. The main goal of the C-School is not “to teach”, but to open the participant a gate toward further personal development, including ability of elicitation and interpretation, connection and modeling, and eventually creation
2. The C-School is a concept, more than an education formula, an attitude toward ourselves and the world; even if it can be implemented outside of an academy, the central cognitive role that universities can play in physical and virtual territories is clearly recognized
3. This path is not passive, but active: the C-School is not a tool for future activities in business and society, but a high-intensity hub of creation and innovation; therefore it supplies social and entrepreneurial agents with substantial outcomes
4. The participants can include not only students of the involved academia, but everyone (junior or senior) qualifies for the C-School experience oriented.

PHASE 1: TRIGGER – The Dialogues with Global Visionaries, generally belonging to the Diotima Society Global Faculty, have the role to challenge and shift current believes and customs, showing how elements appearing obvious and necessary are not so important, while others incumbents are often out of our radar (the Black Swans). These Dialogues are therefore a moment of displacement, oriented to trigger in the participant a process of transformation, both internal and external: new visions are possible only from new “selves”.
People coming from different cultures and countries animate the Dialogues: diversity is a key ingredient of the C-School. The inter-academic alliance (A+B+C+D, see next figure) allows a multiple interaction of the Global Faculty with several groups of “C-Scholars”.

PHASE 2: CREATION – The participants identify an issue coming from the intersection of their personal paths and the challenges of the Phase 1. There can be more than one issue (also depending on the number of participants). These issues are inside the research paths of Diotima Society, to exploit past developments and accelerate future ones. The professors of the specific academia (the Local Faculty) are the first knowledge source. Of course they act as participants themselves, and beyond this, play a role of mentors and tutors. The character of the outcome is given by a new language not pertaining to existing disciplines (therefore able to interact with different environments): a big difference toward classic thesis.

PHASE 3: ENACTION – The outcomes of the work are spread and “enacted” in multiple environments. Enactive Knowledge is information gained through perception–action interaction in an environment: it is experiential, as it relates to doing and depends on the user’s experience, and it is cultural, as the way of doing is itself dependent upon social aspects, attitudes, values, practices, and legacy of the environment. This process can therefore overcome the traditional “chasm” separating academic knowledge from business and society. The Enaction Phase is also a continuation of the Creation Phase, taking place in these new environments. It completes the C-School double circularity (the actors of the Local Faculty take the role of the Global one).